China’s tech firms vow crackdown on online hate speech after knife attack

Clampdown follows fatal stabbing of Chinese woman who tried to stop attack on Japanese mother and child

China’s internet companies have announced a crackdown on “extreme nationalism” online, particularly anti-Japanese sentiment, after a Chinese woman was fatally stabbed while protecting a Japanese mother and child in Suzhou.

Tencent and NetEase, two of the biggest, said at the weekend they would be investigating and banning users who stirred up hatred. The notice from Tencent, which owns the messaging app WeChat, said the incident in Jiangsu province had “attracted public attention” and that “some netizens incited a confrontation between China and Japan [and] provoked extreme nationalism”.

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